According to Neurophysiology and neuropsychology the human brain comprises a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere, which each have a distinct personality or consciousness and a distinct way of processing information. For simplicity, these will be referred to as the left brain and the right brain, respectively. The left brain is known for analytic, categorical thinking and textual, sequential processing. The right brain is known for synthetic, intuitive, holistic thinking and visual-spatial, parallel processing. Therefore, some processes or even simple exposure to certain stimuli will rather activate the right brain and some other rather the left brain.
For example, textual information will rather activate the left brain, visual-spatial information rather the right. Similarly, the act of searching through menus will rather activate the left brain, whereas navigating with e.g. a joystick through a natural landscape or space will rather activate the right brain. Therefore, experience interfaces will rather activate the left or right brain, depending on the type of elements used for interfacing: e.g. visual-spatial or textual elements. Such left right activation will also depend on the type of actions and thinking that are required for using these elements. As explained in the remainder of this text, hemispheric brain activity can also be linked to human emotions and moods. Thus, a product interface can support a certain mood, depending on the way its front-end and back-end are designed, and depending on the processes required to operate such interface.
The problem with current human interfaces is that they require us to process information or perform actions that are not in line with the mood experience for which the product was designed. Or, in other words, these interfaces, at some point during the user experience, tend to activate a part of the brain, which subsequently alters our emotions and thus our mood in a non-desirable way. For example, people watch television for relaxation. Going through menus is an unwelcome interruption when one is in a relaxed mood: it alters our mood from relaxation to frustration.
A need exists for a technique that starts from the desired experienced mood and derives the experience interface including its front-end design, back-end design and its operation taking into account the mood changes induced by the specific brain activity necessary for the interface process and work flow.
Also a need exists for an interface that brings people in the right mood for certain activities or processes that today are not yet optimally served. Such applications, underserved from an experience point of view are illustrated and grouped in six embodiments.
Internet, Media and TV Experience System
Recommendation technology is used to help people find products they like on the internet, through other media or elsewhere. As such, recommenders support the trend towards higher personalization of experiences, and thus make up an important part of the back- and front-end of today's interfaces for internet, media or television. However, there are some issues with today's recommenders.
Some platforms, like television, hardly use recommender technology. Television content providers, video on demand (VOD) content providers or broadcasters preselect programs based on assumptions about the wishes of groups. They provide a selection of programs they believe will most appeal to the class of viewers who subscribe to a channel or a group of channels. Specific genre channels like e.g. cooking channels provide some individualization, compared to the more general channels, but also they contain a pre-selection of programs. Also, viewers need to actively search for programs: they need to search through Electronic Program Guide and menus with their remote control to find something of their interest, forcing them into a frustrated mood.
The recommenders that are currently used fail in a very important aspect: i.e. they do not consider people's desired mood. Therefore they cannot recommend content that is specifically suited to support a person's desired mood. Neuropsychology teaches that human emotions and moods are two-dimensional or bivalent, rather than bipolar. In other words, people may feel attracted (positive valence) or repulsed (negative valence) by content, or they may experience mixed emotions; such as when watching a bloody surgery that both fascinates and disgusts them. It is the relative strength of our positive and negative emotions, which determines our mood. An overall positive emotion, like passion, does not imply a lack of negative emotions. On the contrary, when a person is passionate about something/someone, they typically have both high positive and high negative emotions. A relaxed mood on the hand is characterized by high positive and low negative emotions.
Therefore important information is lost, when people rate content uni-dimensionally, e.g. as is done on a scale from 1 to 5. Such rating does give us a vague, overall indication of how much a person liked a product, but it cannot tell us in which mood the product placed the person. It cannot tell us for example, whether a person rated a television show four stars, because he found it very relaxing, or because he was excited about e.g. the important new scientific insights he picked up from the show. In order to discover such information, a personal interview or written analysis would be needed, but this bipolar rating alone would not disclose such information.
Also, active rating of products or services tends to activate the analytic, critical left brain, even more if written support of the rating is needed. As a result, products or services that are objectively or qualitatively more interesting tend to get higher scores, than products or services that are just relaxing or speak more to one's emotional side. This poses a problem when, after a hard day at work, all that is needed is relaxation. Therefore, we cannot be guided by explicit ratings, and we are certainly not in the mood to read plenty of reviews, before deciding which relaxing movie to watch.
Moreover, current recommenders do not consider the nature of the platform on which they are used. For example, people tend to want to relax in front of television, and surf the Internet for the things they are passionate about. In other words, different platforms are associated with different, desired moods. Current recommenders have not this into account.
Also, current recommenders do not consider the type of transaction for which they are intended. The transaction may be buying, selling, renting, licensing or any type of legal transaction in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer context, but may also be a simple selection, viewing or experience in the most general sense. In the remainder of this text, business-to-business is abbreviated to B2B, and business-to-consumer to B2C.
Most consumers prefer to buy non-investment goods while in a relaxed mood. People, who buy on behalf of a business on the other hand, are typically in another mood, one that involves a higher level of concentration. Recommenders should take these context differences into account in order to optimize performance and output.
Accordingly, the need exists for a system and technique that allows products or content, e.g. audio, video, graphic, advertising, website, brochure, etc. to be pre-selected from one or more content sources and to be presented with a higher degree of accuracy to an individual's particular taste or desired mood on a specific platform and to solicit for a specific type of transaction.
The Different Focus of the Prior Art
Current recommenders for audio, video, advertising, books, . . . can be classified into multiple groups according to their level of personalization. The first group of recommenders provides only generic suggestions, which are identical for every viewer. Examples are recommendations based on mass publicity, popularity or average ratings.
The second group provides roughly personalized recommendations for which the personalization is trivial, for example a recommendation based on the favorite genre of the viewer. Often this second group of recommendations is based on demographics like age, gender, occupation, family situation etc. The advantage of this group is that the results are partially personalized, the disadvantage however is that no high level of personalization can be reached since the available profile data is limited. The third group provides recommendations with the highest level of personalization with two techniques often used in combination:                Content-based recommendations: the user will be recommended items similar to the ones the user preferred in the past. The algorithms use the analysis of the content whereby items are modeled by a set of features that describe the content.        Collaborative filtering (CF) recommendations: The user will be recommended items that people with similar tastes and preferences liked in the past. These algorithms do not use the features of the items since the recommendations are only based on the behavior of a community.        
Relaxation is the main reason why people watch television. Current television interfaces however frustrate people instead of relaxing them, because they require such operations like scrolling through text-based menus or EPGs (electronic program guides) and programming the recording of content.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system that provides the advantages of digital television, video and Web TV such as browsing through web content, Video-On-Demand, time shifting etc. and that simultaneously supports the relaxing nature of the television viewing experience.
Some current web TV systems allow the user to create virtual channels. However, these systems require the user to go through menus and type in key words using a keyboard-like device, while sitting in front of their television. This does not support the relaxing nature of the natural TV viewing experience. On the contrary, it often jeopardizes relaxation and sometimes even causes frustration.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system that supports relaxation while using virtual channels, by separating the management of virtual channels from the relaxed experiencing of those virtual channels.
Individual users of interfaces for broadcasted media or TV are limited to the specific time slots in which the broadcaster chooses to make a particular program available. This specific time does not necessarily match the mood and availability of the viewer. If the viewer is not available or in the mood at the time of airing of such content, the program must either be recorded or missed with the hopes that it will be re-aired later.
Recording devices which enable time shifted viewing have physical restrictions associated with the system, such as the number programs which may be recorded, or, the number programs which may be simultaneously record, but the most important disadvantage is the hassle and frustration accompanying the programming of recording and the selection and replaying of recorded content.
Although Catch-Up TV is available for time shifting, its functionality is limited and its use does not support the relaxing nature of the natural TV viewing experience. Both selection of time shifted content and programming of time shifting devices are not relaxing, involving too much left brain activity.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and technique in which program content may be accessed and viewed in a time-shifted manner to suit the viewers' availability, convenience, and mood. A need exists for a system and technique in which program content may be accessed and viewed in a time-shifted manner, which overcomes the current limitations of existing technologies.
Media or television advertisement often interrupts the relaxing nature of watching the content, creating annoyance and frustration. When watching recorded content, one can fast-forward advertising manually, an option unavailable for broadcasted content on air. The problem with advertisement skipping in recorded time shifted content is that it potentially may jeopardize the business model of broadcasters or content creators that use advertisement as a source of income to finance the broadcasting service or content creation. Also, current systems do not verify whether a viewer actually watched an advertisement, so they cannot guarantee the advertiser value is actually created. Also current systems do not allow for the user to pull advertising of interest, such pulled advertisement of interest is of higher value to advertisers, than the mass bulk advertisement or personalized pushed advertisement.
Systems, which have tried to improve relaxation by altering the advertising viewing behavior, did not respect the advertising business of the television broadcasters. Accordingly, a need exists for a system that addresses viewing of advertising in a more flexible and relaxing way, without jeopardizing the advertising business of broadcasters. A need exists for a system that allows television viewers to delay or time shift advertising to support the relaxing nature of the natural viewing experience and at the same time does not jeopardize advertising income.
Interface for Reading, Researching or Writing
Researching and writing are activities that combine in tandem a left brain textual and systematical approach with a right brain overview eliciting creativity. This tandem activity requires a specific tandem interface specifically supporting the right brain activity and its associated mood and the left brain activity and its associated mood.
Currently textual or analytic material is typically stored in files and directories, which are accessible through interfaces with menus, tabs, etc. or through interfaces that prompt the user for typed commands. However, this interfacing does not support associative, synthetic thinking (i.e. typical right brain thinking), and may result in frustration or lack of overview and creativity, if too much analytical or textual activity (i.e. typical left brain activity) is required from the interface.
Some tools exist, which partly address this issue. For example, mind mapping software allows one to organize material in a more visual-spatial way, using branched structures, colors, some images, etc. Another example is a web tool like Pearltrees that allows one to organize and access e.g. all one's material on a specific hobby into one or more branched, schematic trees.
These tools however, miss the functionality needed for organizing, accessing and navigating content in tandem or almost concurrently in two ways, i.e. in a categorical, analytic way necessary to systematically work through the information as well as in an associative, synthetic way, necessary to create the overview eliciting creativity.
Consequently, a need exists for a system that combines creativity eliciting overview experience with disciplined craftsmanship eliciting experience by accessing both processes through separated left and right brain interfaces, combined in a tandem interface.
The metaphors used by state-of-the-art interfaces for the access and management of mainly textual or analytic material, are not optimized for the two distinguishable tandem moods. For example, mind mapping tools use simple branched structures, web tools like Pearltrees use simple schematic trees.
Although such metaphors do already help to organize material in a somewhat more visual and intuitive way, they are still very analytic and schematic, and as such do not support true associative, synthetic, exploring thinking. Such thinking requires more concrete, intuitive, conceptual metaphors that typically appeal mostly to the right brain, our seat of synthetic thinking in order to optimize the user mood. So, a need exist for a system that addresses this need for a metaphor for organic RB interfacing and structural categorical LB interfacing.
State-of-the-art systems and interfaces for the access and management of mainly textual or analytic material do not provide an automatic way for placing orders and for paying, which is transparent and thus relaxing to the user. The use of an order placement and payment system typically requires such things as selecting a provider, entering of profile access data, like username and password, entering or verifying of bank credentials, etc. Most of the time, the hassle involved in doing this, is an unwelcome interruption to the task one is actually performing, i.e. to the reading, researching or writing of texts or presentations. This frustrating interruption makes us losing the overview and therefore often stops the creative process.
Subsequently, a need exists for an automatic order placement and payment system for content that separates the ordering from the hassle. Or, in other words, one should be able to do the ordering through a transparent and therefore relaxing interface and perform the hassle, at another moment in time, through a state-of-the-art order management interface, which allows such things as choosing a preferred supplier, entering credential etc.
Current e-reader black-white text representation and their emulators typically do not allow displaying figures in full color. Figures appeal much more to the right brain and are therefore more relaxing when in color or potentially even in 3D.
Systems that do support color display typically require the user to search through menus to change settings. Such operations interrupt the reading or researching experience and are typically frustrating, overview distorting and creativity killing and therefore unwelcome.
Consequently, a need exists for an e-reader black-white text representation emulator that allows the user to display figures in full color or 3D by performing a simple, intuitive operation, which keeps the user relaxed and does not require him to go through menus, or enter text or keywords or even change platform.
Buying System for Recurrent Customer Purchases
Purchasing of household goods, like shampoo, toilet paper and the like through internet currently requires the typical hassle of such things as making a shopping list or remembering what needs to be bought, sitting in front of a computer device to place orders at a web shop, etc. These kinds of actions are often unwelcome, since they compete with other, more pleasurable activities. Thus, a need exists for a web-based system that allows more automated recurrent purchasing. Such system is not only a more efficient and more relaxing alternative to state-of-the-art web shopping, but also to the traditional supermarket shopping.
Automatic Trading System for Securities
A fourth embodiment concerns a system for trading securities. Securities are typically optimally bought from sellers who are in panic, and sold to buyers who are passionate about these securities. However, current systems are not able to detect panic or passion in economic markets or individual trading parties at the time these moods emerge, neither are they able to automatically buy or sell securities based on such knowledge. Thus, there is a need for an automatic trading system for securities that takes into account buyers' and sellers' moods and performs automated trading activities accordingly.
Automatic Internet Bank or Investment Fund
Current banks and investment funds are too often seduced into profit-seeking decisions at the expense of objective risk management. As a result, too high risks are taken, possibly resulting in big losses or even financial system crisis. Thus, there is a need for a trading system that supports the left brain task of objective risk management and at the same time blocks the right brain profit-seeking measures. In order to minimize desire for profit and the associated right brain activity a semi-automatic proceduralized trading system needs to be designed featuring a specific tandem interface suppressing right brain activity.
Sales Training, Consultancy and Management Software
Sales strategy and related sales material, training, consultancy and sales management, including the sales and purchase of companies, in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, also does not take into account the moods or emotions of the buyer. Consider for example the sales of an innovative, high-tech product or service to a business that is not yet acquainted with such product or service. Such sales projects typically require the buyer to be passionate about the seller's offering. Current B2B sales & marketing strategies however typically tend to either bore potential buyers, or leave them worried. In both cases, this leads to suboptimal or non-existent sales results.
A typical example consists of businesses trying to initiate a buying cycle by sending marketing brochures or emails full of technical specifications to prospects who did not yet buy into the vision behind the offering. Another example consists of businesses, who succeed in selling a vision, in making buyers willing to change, but who subsequently fail to hedge the buyers' private or social fears.
Current sales models do distinguish the different stages a buyer typically goes through prior to placing on order. However, they fail to link these stages to the buyers' basic emotions, moods and cortical activity. Therefore, the sales approach is not optimized towards supporting the natural mood for that stage of the buying cycle.
Also, different types of sale require different sales strategies. Business-to-business sales differ from business-to-consumer sales, and the sales of new application products differ from the sales of know application products. Also mergers and acquisitions, i.e. the purchase or sales of a company, require their specific approach.
Thus, there is a need for a model that links a buyer's typical emotions and mood, related to a specific type of sale, to a suitable sales strategy. This model may then be used in sales trainings, sales consultancy, M&A consultancy, and it may be implemented in sales management software packages, like CRM packages used for the follow-up of sales leads and sales projects, for sales analyses, etc. Such a sales strategy subsequently becomes a purchase experience strategy, depending on the context of business-to-business or business-to-consumers as well as depending on the dominant buyer's emotion being fear or desire and the mood phases that follow typically when dealing with these emotions.